If you live in europe, please check in with your elderly neighbours. Hot temperatures can be deadly for old people
What a horrendous color map. The true anarchy in this post is the cartographers use of hue.
Exactly what I was thinking. There are 3 different off-white colors that indicate vastly different temperature variants. This map is incredibly ambiguous. Which white zones are -8° below average, roughly the same as average, or 13° above average?
The neighbouring colors are different though, so since it’s not going to jump from +10 to -8 you can unequivocally tell. Honestly I think I hate this less than having 8 shades of slightly different red
Like I don’t have time to get into it cus I’m at work, but their use of hue is a non-function the color space.
Context clues
I get it,it is still interpreatable. but still a poor colorbar choice.
Do you honestly believe that someone like Joe Rogan could actually understand a graph with this much ambiguity?
If comprehension by Joe Rogan is the standard I think we might as well just give up now.
Just a map with “hot as fuck bro!” printed across it.
Maybe some flames at the hottest spot.
Also, fuck that moron.
It’s clear enough to me.
Could you try instead telling me the general message you get from the map?
Why the fuck is there white between red and red?
White = -8, 0, and 13.5-ish
It goes red-black-white-red. And since temperatures rarely jumps 5°c without gradient, the map will have black and gray area surrounding any white that represents +13, and white will surround and red that represents +18°.
I’ve just realised that this is saying that the UK is warmer than France. Because despite the term being white hot it’s actually decided that red is hotter than white. Why didn’t they just go from white being cold to red been hot?
I think they had to extend the scale in a hurry.
I might be the only one who doesn’t mind the color scheme. For the temperature range on the map, the only colors that don’t fit into the typical blue-to-red gradient are the green for really cold, which makes the coldest anomalies really pop, and the white for really hot. I get the complaints about white being used for both normal average temperature and for extreme heat, but it’s easy to tell which is which by the neighboring colors, and it almost looks as if France got so hot that it got a third degree burn, which chars the flesh, nerves included, and no longer feels like anything - thus insensate white.
So MAYBE, and I’m pulling this out of my ass with no background here, but expectation is temperature doesn’t jump, but flows as a gradient. Using France as the start, we’ve white fading to dark greys then reds, which is the hottest of the three white possibilities. As going hotter then that gets pink again, the top end is white in France. We then decrease down the scale until we get those. green pockets. Light green/white touching green would signify the lower of the three white temps. Not a great map, but perhaps it’s an understood practice with the field. After all, how do you convert a quantitative scale into qualitative data. You can’t really just number everything (people have shit attention spans and they’ll gloss over immediately. Anybody who’s delivered technical data to management can attest to that lol) Color works well for that, but has a limited useful spectrum. Getting too specific in a single spectrum muddies the graphic (what’s the exact color over Lisbon here? This kinda salmony guy? So 8? Or closer to 9?)
So there is a lot of work on this in color theory, and you can go deep into this… Here are a few chapters on the matter: https://slcc.pressbooks.pub/maps/chapter/9-2/ , https://courses.ems.psu.edu/geog486/node/876 , and this part in particular https://courses.ems.psu.edu/geog486/node/877
Basically, their use of brightness within hue bins makes this a non-function. Notice how its gets whiter closer to 0 and closer to 13. If two values of Y can get plugged into a function and they both return 0 for the expected X term, thats a non-function.
Temperature, or rather, difference in temperature from expected, which is whats being plotted here, is about divergence from normal.
To fix this map, pick a divergent color scheme, center 0, then create bins at either a specific interval or at quantile intervals.
Something like this: https://colorbrewer2.org/#type=diverging&scheme=RdYlBu&n=11
While I do appreciate the information on better infographic creation, the example map has such a small range comparably. There’s over 30 values, not to mention the shades in-between values. I think a two color gradient would end up being very smooth at this scale. Sorta looks to generally drop in temperature as you go east here, nice red to blue fade.
Expanding the color palette does give more room for distinction, but that’s seemingly how they got where they did.
To be fair, from my friends who’ve actually had color theory and graphic design classes, STEM folks tend to do a poor job of communicating well.
So eh. Maybe it’s pointless for me to argue against it.
To be fair, from my friends who’ve actually had color theory and graphic design classes, STEM folks tend to do a poor job of communicating well.
it’s a way of thinking about your audience, i think. when i worked in accounting and had to present to and teach accountants: simple formatted tables, stuff that looks like excel, it didn’t need to be bright or colorful. it just needed to have colors that were unobtrusive. i’m working in music now and if my seminars don’t have showmanship (and if i use powerpoint at all) i’m hosed. different audiences have completely different styles that they are used to communicating with, and if you adapt to that you’re going to have more success
so like, i’m sure the STEM folk are fine at communicating within their field. outside? well, a few of my uncles were engineers. does it show?
Let’s go from white to red, then when it gets hotter back to white followed by red
Nevermind the fact London this year is hotter than the nearest town to death valley last year.
The solution of a million pounds mate!! Din, din, din! We have a winner!
Warm summer? Pfft. It’s the coolest summer for the rest of our lives!
That depends on where you are.
Hahaha that is so depressing hahaha
goes to cry in a corner
Unhelpful
Unhelpful.
Yeah,how else do you prove you’re not terrorist?
Whose decision was it to make “6” and “18” such similar colors
Whoever had to extend the scale in a hurry because the numbers were literally unthinkable when it was made. This year people who can have lunch in death valley national park are getting cooler temperatures than London.
Those people near death valley are living in (mostly shitty) homes built for extreme heat, with central air thick insulation and light colored exteriors, double pane windows, entry vestibules in the nicer ones, all the things nobody in england has seen outside american TV.
That is absolutely brutal. I really hope people are finding ways to escape the heat.
Separately, this visualization is bad in a way I have never seen before: a scale of pink to dark red, where dark red actually represents 2 completely different numbers!
There seems to be three different values for white.
And some of those green spots are damn close to using it.
The real anarchy is the mapmakers use of hue.
Many just can’t escape it, for many reasons. People are dying, and this will only become more and more common and even worse. We only see the short term effects now too, it’ll be so much worse after some years when the long term effects become clear. Crops dying, water shortages, infrastructure damage etc.
Time to die a suffering death because of the capitalism :-
…so is northeastern France -8, 0, or +13? What a fucking stupid color scale
Deviation to the average temperature. So its 13 K above the average. Or in other words around 42-44°C
Edit: oh you were complaining about the colormap? Yeah its super shit
The color scale is definitely… a choice but it is not ambiguous. There is only one “path” that goes red, then black, then white.
Not only are the colours bad, but the numbers are too? How is a max of 18 in summer worrying? We are way above those numbers.
That’s variation from the average. It could certainly have been presented better.
That’s not the temperature. That’s the degree to which the temperature is strange.
Wtf did the map burn a hole in France?
Someone running a magnifying glass over there
Is this the Musk laser space weapon
Damn, some french twitter user must have called him a loser or something.
Definitely feels like it (am in France).
I think the gates of hell are there.
it was too hot. France has evaporated.
we should stop global warming before we lose a place we care about
Maybe we should stop climate change after the UK burns up.
Wouldn’t matter, the moment it gets hot wheel them a great to Spain anyway.
While yes, a 14c deviation from average temperatures is fucking insane, so is this map. The scale is cooked.
That’s a 57f deviation for us mouth-breathing heathens.
+14C deviation is equivalent to +25F not 57. You don’t add the 32F for a deviation, only actual. Still an insane increase above normal though.
It means that statistically, of the climate was constant, the temperatures we have now would be as probable as having 6°C.
What’s it measuring against average temperature for this time of year because Europe does get hot at this time of year we know that. It’s also not as bad as the heat wave we had 6 weeks ago. Not too underestimate our awful the weather currently is.
I assume it’s comparing against the average temperatures for June 21-26 as that would align with what my weather app says, which compares with the average temperatures since 1970
What a great time to visit such a rural paradise that is Lithuania!
What is up with France?
Genuinely cooking.
There were 20 drowning deaths this weekend because people were jumping into dangerous rivers to escape the heat.
Hot
It’s a fucking oven.
The product of human activity, Donald Trump’s deregulations, everyone trusting China with their manufacturing (given their own lax systems of regulation), and the rampant building of data centers.
We are all partially guilty, and the phrase “fry in hell” is of our own making.
Possibly the worst color scale I’ve ever seen on a chart
Europe needs to normalize air conditioning. I’ll never forget the most miserable summer of my life was in germany. Summer gets hot there just like most other places, but in Europe, domiciles don’t have AC 🥵
I have medical documentation saying I need adequate temperature control and I have offered my landlord to pay all costs associated with installing AC and still they banned me from having AC 😭.
This will probably start to change if this is now the reality but at least historically the reason Europe didn’t have air conditioning was it wasn’t worth it for the 4 days of the year that it would be used.
The other reason being that houses won’t design to be air conditioned, we don’t have ducted heating so if I bought an air conditioner and had it installed in a room it would air condition that room, if I wanted air conditioning in my house I would have to have a unit fitted in each room, that’s going to get expensive. Alternatively I could buy this £15 fan from Lidl.
